Journal of Eurasian Studies - EPA

April‐June 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 2.
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stenography. The decipherment took Pálma Schenken twenty years of work and the manuscript is
extremely hard to read. The travel diary gives a good impression of what Count Zichy and his team were
doing in the Caucasus. (…)
In the Caucasus
The expedition to the Caucasus started on April 30, 1895, leaving from Budapest, and ended on August
14 of the same year, when the Russian‐Austrian border was crossed. The members of the expedition had
to prepare in advance, bringing tents, summer and winter clothes, weapons, ammunition, equipment for
horse‐riding and mountaineering, a minimum of food, photography equipment, phonographs, maps,
books, medical supplies and so on. Within three and half months, they had travelled 20.000 kilometres by
train, boat, horse farm‐wagons, horse and camel. Count Zichy and his men wandered through deserts,
over mountain tops several thousand metres high, and they visited cities and camps of ethnic Turkish
nomads. They had to deal with different weather conditions like storms, rain, hail‐stones and the
expedition members had to stand the heat of 40 degrees Celsius. The travellers visited all the territories of
the Caucasus, including Adyge, Circassia, Kabardino, North Ossetia, Ingushia, Chechnya, Dagestan,
Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Adzharia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In all these territories, they stayed overnight
in villages and towns. 19 Count Zichy and his research team met with a lot of different Caucasian people
and tribes, speaking different languages, like Adyghe, Abkhaz, Chechen, Avar, Georgian, Mingrelian,
Karatsjaj, Circassian, Lezgic and so on. They took part in interesting meetings, festivities, celebrations,
rituals and dinners with princes. Count Zichy and his men kept their supporters and families informed by
letters and articles for Hungarian newspapers. Bálint de Szentkatolna claimed that each of the expedition
members was left with his own branch of sciences ‘because there was complete freedom of study.’ This
freedom of study was however interpreted completely differently by the leader of the expedition. In a
letter from Odessa dated May, 10 1895, Count Zichy wrote: Szádeczky and Bálint are of no use to me, they
are spending the whole day in the libraries. Csellingarian has picked up an ancient Russian with whom
he is playing chess all day. Only Wosinszky is doing the research with me.’ 20 (…)
The last important visit the Zichy‐expedition made was to St. Petersburg, where Count Zichy and his
team arrived on August 2 and where they would stay until August 11. On August 6, the expedition
members met a relative of Count Jenő Zichy, Count Mihály Zichy, the famous Hungarian painter, who
was appointed as a court painter in St. Petersburg in 1847. Mihály Zichy was also highly honoured in
Georgia, because he painted illustrations for ‘The Knight in the Panther’s Skin’, the Georgian national epic
poem, written by the Georgian poet, Shota Rustaveli, in the twelfth century. Only Count Jenő Zichy was
allowed to have an audience with Czar Nicolas II, who wanted to know everything about the expedition,
asking Zichy whether they had found the Hungarians the researchers had been looking for. 21 (…)
19 See the map in Szadéczky‐Kardoss (2000, 240).
20 Szádeczky‐Kardoss (2000, 241).
21 Szádeczky‐Kardoss (2000, 238).
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